Jean-luc De Fanti

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Igor is the Rodney Dangerfield of cinematic sidekicks. With rare exceptions (Marty Feldman's turn in Young Frankenstein), the deformed lab assistant gets little horror movie respect. Even the legendary Bela Lugosi balked at the suggestion that he play one alongside a then relatively unknown Boris Karloff. It's always about the monster or the mad scientist, not the hunchbacked scrub doing all the dirty work. In the imaginative new animated feature Igor, director Anthony Leondis and writer Chris McKenna try to change our perception of the often marginalized character. While there's imagination to spare, the storyline is often bogged down by obvious animation conventions.

In the country of Malaria, young Igor (John Cusack) longs to be a mad scientist. Every year, the grim, gloomy nation holds a competition to see who can invent the most horrific item. The winning design is then used by King Malbert (Jay Leno) to blackmail the rest of the world into filling the kingdom's coffers. Typically, Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) steals the best idea -- with the help of his girlfriend Jacyln (Jennifer Coolidge) -- and takes all the glory. But this time, things are a little unusual. The best invention turns out to be Igor's: a gargantuan fiend named Eva (Molly Shannon) who fancies herself an actress. With the help of his self-made companions Brain (Sean Hayes) and Scamper (Steve Buscemi), our hero must convince the creature that she's truly evil, or lose a chance at his dream once and for all.

What the title Three Blind Mice has to do with a movie about a serial killer and webcams is beyond me, but I'm not losing any sleep thinking about it. This Edward Furlong vehicle is a poor film at best, and its odd title is the least of its problems.

The story introduces us to Thomas Cross (Furlong), who is obsessed with Internet webcams (so 1999!). One night, he witnesses his favorite gal Cathy as she is murdered while she's preparing dinner in her apartment. Yipes! The dinner preparation isn't so exciting (though Thomas is enthralled by it), but that murder certainly wakes him up. Too bad he doesn't really know where she lives, just her web URL, which the cops don't really grab on to.